Need advice on how to properly film a music video.

[Andrei Petrik]

Hi everyone,

I am planning on recording a music video.
We're keeping the concept very simple. The band plays in a dark warehouse. Thats it, no plots or anything else.

What is the best technique to work with that will allow me least headaches in post. Does the band play live? Do they play live along with the CD boom box? Do they lip sync to a boom box or a p.a. system? Any kind of feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Tim Dashwood]

A loud PA system will be necessary if the band has a drummer.
I would recommend you prep the song with preroll and a "2-beep" for playback on an ipod. It would be even better to run visual timecode and the soundtrack from a DVD. That's how I usually do it. Having timecode allows you to start and stop mid-song without too much trouble syncing later.

[Andrei Petrik]

That's a great suggestion :re visual timecode. Thanks.
Does the audio frequency matter during the filming?

[Cris Hendrix]

You could put some pads on the drums to muffle them

As previously mentioned you can easily sync up the footage for editing, so it's pretty obvious but remember to run through the song several times capturing different angles each time through that you can edit together later and have a multi-camera look

[Christopher Kondys]

Make sure the singer actually sings. I have had trouble in the past when a singer became self conscious in front of the camera and didn't want to sing, instead he lip-synced and you can really tell in when you watch the clip back. There is so much more energy when they actual perform compared to faking it.

Depending on if you want different sections of the song to have different styles (you mentioned it all being in one location but the style of filming/editing might change through out the clip), have your song broken up into those separate sections to save yourself skipping back and forth through a track to find the bridge before the second verse.

Ensure that the band members have had enough sleep/water/exercise before the shoot. Tired musicians will show in the clip so try and not schedule a shoot when they have had a big gig (and after party) the night before. Keep plenty of water on set because everyone is going to need it (especially if their performance is pretty intense). Exercise may seem like a funny one but I recently shot a clip were the band had been recording without gigging for a few months and they wanted to do a clip to launch the new set of tracks. They rocked up the the shoot and within the first couple of songs the singer had cramped up because his body wasn't used to the nonstop performance after so much time off. Cost us a few takes while he rested.

Last bit of advice relates to alcohol. We were on set shooting a clip for a rock band and the singer was having a hard time loosening up in front of the camera. After 2 and a bit ours of bad footage, we decided we had to do something so one of us rushed down to the bottleshop and bought some beer. Within 20 minutes and ONE drink later the singer was final performing up to everyones standards. I would only use this as a last resort and I wouldn't use it with every musician/band. It did save the music video though so I thought it might be useful.

I hope some of this might help.
Chris.